Reading Roundup: Latest Happenings in eCommerce ~ January 21, 2017

This week, we begin by looking at an analysis of how Amazon is probably going to kill more American jobs than China did. While the eCommerce giant disrupts the job market, we'll also take a look at four industries that are surprisingly being disrupted by the eCommerce industry itself.

Then we get schooled about how Augmented Reality (AR) will shape the future of eCommerce. And speaking of getting schooled, Jack Ma does exactly that when he makes it clear that Alibaba is not the “Chinese Amazon”. He clarifies that his style of running the Chinese eCommerce giant is quite different from how Jeff Bezos runs Amazon.

In other news, we look at how new players are emerging in the eCommerce platform arena. New data by SimilarTech clearly shows that things are changing. And finally, we find out how and why Twitter's “Buy” button went poof.

It looks like Amazon will kill more American jobs than China ever did. With its aggressive jump into the GAFO (general merchandise, apparel and accessories, furniture and other sales) market and its efforts to take on grocery stores and drugstores as well as revolutionizing its delivery services, the giant online retailer is likely to kill well over two million jobs in a couple of years.

There are four industries that were thought to be unaffected from the eCommerce perspective. Yet the budding industry has come in and is totally reshaping them. Click above to find out which industries they are and how the disruption is happening.

Augmented reality has the potential of totally changing the shopping experience. It has the potential of removing uncertainty from the buying process. Retailers who will reap the biggest benefits will be the ones willing to invest in the technology and commit to bringing it into the real world.

During a conversation at the World Economic Forum, the Alibaba founder and executive chairman Jack Ma made it clear that Alibaba isn't exactly the “Chinese Amazon” that many people consider it to be. Among other things, he said that he and Jeff Bezos differ in their approaches to running their companies. Click above to find out more.

In yet another attempt to make buying something as easy as humanly possible, Amazon has unveiled digital versions of its Dash buttons. The eCommerce leader will automatically create them for items you recently ordered or order often. Certainly a great way to shrink the time between “want” and “buy.”

Over the years, a couple of eCommerce platform heavyweights have been controlling the lion's share of the market, but it looks like things are starting to change. New data gathered by SimilarTech shows a shift in the pecking order. The largest platforms are not necessarily the fastest-growing ones. Click above to find out more.

It's been a long time coming, but it's finally happened. Twitter's ‘Buy' button is officially dead and gone. The feature, which was launched back in 2014, allowed users to purchase items from within a tweet. The shutdown raises big questions about Twitter's partnership with Stripe.